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[Prom The National View, January 25, 1890. J 

A PlaAN TO UNITES 

THE CONFLICTING INTERESTS IN THE LOCALITY OF THE PROPOSED 
EXPOSITION, AND TO CELEBRATE THE 400TH ANNIVER- 
SARY OF THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 



BY CHAS. S. KEYSER, 
524 Walnut Stbekt, 
PHILADELPHIA, PA. 



THE ENTIRE CONTINENT 

AS IT EXISTS, 

THE TRUE DISPImAY 

ON THE OCCASION OF 



BY HORACE J. SMITH, 
LOUAN BUlLDlNti, 

1307 Arch Stekkt, 
PHILADELPHIA. 



K\5U 



tyN'O^ 



A PLAN TO UNITE. 



The following is a paper presented to 
the committee of congress to which was 
referred the consideration of the qaadri- 
centennial celebration. It is from the 
pen of the gentleman, Charles S. Keyser, 
Esq., attorney -at-law, who gave the plan 
which was carried out for the celebration 
of the centennial of American independ- 
ence in Philadelphia: 

Permit me, sir, to lay before your com- 
mittee a plan for the celebration of the 
400th anniversary of the discovery of 
America. 

An exhibition, alone, as a means of 
celebrating an event, is, from its very 
nature, always incomplete, and hence it 
has been found necessary — as in the ex- 
hibition of 1876, here, and in the exhibi- 
tion in Paris, which has just closed — to 
set apart a day during the exhibition in 
which a celebration proper for the event 
was held. The celebration of the Fourth 
of July was held outside, and independent 
of, the exhibition at Philadelphia, and the 
celebration of the 14th of July, held in 
the same manner, outside of the exhibi- 
tion in Paris, and therefore, whatever the 
decision of your committee, in regard to 
the exhibition, may be, a celebration of 
some character will take place in this 
country on the 14th day of October, 1892. 

In developing any plan for such a cele- 
bration, the character of the event itself 
must be considered and adhered to. 

The event was a voyage. The result of the 
event was the opening of a new world to 
civilization. In consequence of this, 
large numbers of the population of Europe 
migrated to this country; this migration 



has continued, and is larger now than at 
any other time in its past history. 

The census of the United States, since 
it has been regularly taken, shows that 
from every nationality of Europe, every 
country, continent and island of the old 
world, representatives have come here for 
permanent settlement. 

The celebration, therefore, by these 
facts, is determined to be: 

First. A presentation of the voyage, ac- 
companied with vessels representative of 
the development of navigation, and the 
improvement in vessels since that time. 

Second. Our nationality being the re- 
sult of that voyage, its exhibit should be 
the leading idea of the celebration. That 
exhibit should consist, as has been alreadj' 
proposed, necessarily of the material re- 
sults of this work of four centuries. 

For the details of the celebration, I 
would propose that the government of 
Spain should send a duplicate of the three 
vessels which Columbus commanded. 
These to be accompanied by war and 
merchant vessels containing government 
representatives and scientific men from 
that country. 

That England should send, with repre- 
sentative men of that nation, vessels of 
the war and peace marine of that coun- 
try, and in the same way France, Ger- 
many, Italy, Russia, Turkey and other 
nations. 

As England furnished the earliest and 
the bulk of the population of the eastern 
states, the English fleet should arrive at 
Boston. As the Dutch were the founders 
of that city, and are still a leading portion 



of their city population, the Dutch fleet 
should arrive at New York. As the Ger- 
mans formed the bulk of the population 
of Pennsylvania, the German fleet should 
come to Philadelphia. As the French 
were the founders of Louisiana, the 
French fleet to New Orleans, where the 
representatives of the east South Ameri- 
can republics might also conveniently 
come. The vessels from Japan, China, 
Australia, with the west South American 
republics, to San Francisco. These would 
arrive at about the same time. The fleet 
from Spain should land at a port nearest 
to Washington, so as to form the initial 
feature of the celebration. 

Tnese representatives should be re- 
ceived at those ports with suitable de- 
monstrations, and after such demonstra- 
tion should proceed to the capital, where 
the celebration should be held on the anni- 
versary day of the discovery. 

The organization of this celebration 
should be: 

The president of the United States, his 
cabinet, members of congress, members 
of the Supreme Court, heads of depart- 
ments, the governors of the states, mayors 
of cities, heads of representative bodies 
and heads of the societies formed frooi 
their nationalities, which have been 
organized among us. 

The programme should embody as its 
leading features: 

An invocation to God for his blessing 
on the whole earth. 

An address of welcome, by the presi- 
dent of the United States, to the foreign 
representatives. 

Keplies from the representatives of the 
leading nationalities. 

A eulogium of the great navigator and 
discoverer of the new world. 

The national airs of the leading nations 
of the world, by an orchestra. 

The uniting of all the telegraph lines of 
the world with Washington, and the ex- 
change of messages of congratulation be- 
tween our government and other govern- 
ments of the world. 

A benediction. 

At the conclusion of the ceremonies, 
the representatives of foreign govern- 
ments, accompanied by a committee of 
congress, and citizens who have served on 
foreign embassies, should make a tour to 
exhibitions, which should be organized 
for the occasion, displaying the products 
of the four leading sections of ttie coun- 
try, the president and his cabinet and the 
most distingulBhed representatives of the 



government should make the same tour 
to these exhibitions, which might be four. 

At Atlanta, an exhibit of agricultural, 
horticultural, and mining products of the 
southeastern section of this country. 

At San Francisco, an exhibit of agricul- 
tural, horticultural and mining products 
of the southwestern section. 

At Chicago or St. Louis, an exhibit of 
the productions of the great northwest. 

At New York, an exhibit of the middle 
and eastern states' productions in manu- 
factures, mines and agriculture. 

These four exhibitions, illustrating oifr 
400 years of progress, would be hightened 
in interest by including exhibits from 
other countries, as the southern nations 
of Europe have been instrumental in de- 
veloping the civilization of the southern 
section of our country, exhibits from 
Spain, Italy, France and Africa could be 
made at Atlanta. 

P^xhibits from England and other coun- 
tries of middle Europe, at the New York 
exhibition. 

From Germany, Norway, Sweden and 
other countries of northern P^urope, at 
the Chicago exhibition. 

A display of Russian, Australian and 
Japanese exhibits at San Francisco. 

In this way the various countries of the 
world could be represented in these exhi- 
bitions in the center of their own result- 
ing populations. By tlius dividing the ex- 
hibitions into Jour sections the bulk of the 
whole country would be enabled, on ac- 
count of comparative nearness, to see at 
least one of these. 

The committee of congress with the rep- 
resentatives of foreign nations, leaving 
Washington imm diately after the 14th 
of October, would first proceed to Atlanta, 
then to San Francisco, then to St. Louis 
and Chicago, where there would be a dis- 
play of the merchant marine of that 
section, on the lake, as a feature; then 
proceed, by way of the great lakes, down 
the Hudson, where they would be accom- 
panied Dy the steamers of that river and 
the sound, to New York, where the sev- 
eral fleets should in the meanwhile ren- 
dezvous, and where the final display 
should take place — an international naval 
review, celebrating the victories of peace, 
in which, for the first time in human his- 
tory, vessels of all nations would meet on 
common ground — honor to the discoverer 
of this new world, in the interests of 
peace. 

A month should be devoted to this tour, 
which would be in the nature of a tri- 



umphal march from sea to sea, across the 
continent which he gave to the world. 

The whole event should be in charge of 
a committee of congress. 

The natural jealousy which would exist 
in the granting of an exclusive appropri- 
ation to any one section of the country 
would be avoided by this manner of cele- 
bration. 



An opportunity would be given at these 
various points for the great bulk of the 
American people to meet for the first time 
together, and for the head of the nation, 
with his cabinet, to make, for the first 
time in the history of the government, a 
tour of the four sections of the whole 
country. Charles S. Keyser, 

524 Walnut Street, Philadelphia. 



THE ENTIRE CONTINENT. 



t, y 



Logan Buildings, 
1307 Arch street, 
Januay 20, 1890 
Charles K. Keyser, Esq., 

Philadelphia, Pa. 

My Dear Friend — There is one point of 
your splendid scheme on which you have 
not laid sufficient stress. 

You well said that the idea of a quadri- 
centennial is: First, a voyage; and, second 
a continent given to civilization. Your 
suggestion for illustrating a voyage across 
the Atlantic by fleets from Italy, Spain, 
Portugal, Greece, Great Britain, Holland, 
France, Germany, Scandinavia and 
Russia quite fully develop that feature of 
your grand scheme. Your idea also, of 
concentrating in the four quarters of our 
empire exhibitions of the specimens of 
the products of those sections is also most 
admirablo. Each section, under this 
arrangement, will feel a pride and neces- 
sity to demonstrate the capacities of their 
own region, and the people of the respec- 
tive sections will each be animated by a 
spirit of civic pride to produce an ex- 
haustive display. The four displays also 
have the additional advantage of doing 
justice to the people of each section of I 



our country, for it thus enables those who 
cannot go far from home to visit a grand 
exposition which will stimulate every 
visitor intellectually and incite them to 
higher attainments in the future. It also 
solves that very diflicult problem, viz., the 
jealousy naturally arising from the gift of 
patronage to any one particular city, and 
it also justly brings Washington in as the 
legislative, the administrative and the 
judicial centre of the nation — city 
which, in itself, is the exposition of the 
national authority, dignity, centralization 
and government, for, my dear sir, it is 

A CONTINENT GIVEN TO CIVILIZATION, 

that is the real display we have to make 
to the world. 

Perhaps not one person in a thousand 
of our citizens has actually seen his coun- 
try. The eastern man who has not 
crossed the Rockies and Sierras is lament- 
ably ignorant; not to have crossed the 
Mississippi and seen the cities, sprung by 
magic, Minerva-like, full fledged, of St. 
Paul, Minneapolis, Kansas City and Den- 
ver, from the brain of the American city 
builder, is to remain as unconscious of the 



6 



greatness of one's own country as if one 
had never seen a map of it. Indeed there 
are dwellers on the little slope that lies 
between the AUeghanies and the Atlantic 
who have never crossed the first mountain 
range that forms the eastern boundary of 
the greatest plain on the globe. The man 
who has not crossed the Alleghany into 
the Mississippi Valley has yet to learn 
the a b c of his own country. 

Nor should we of the north forget the 
swelling greatness of the new south, 
which, just bursting away from the an- 
achronism of the times before the war, is 
only beginning to demonstrate its illim- 
itable resources in agriculture and min- 
erals and in manufacturing. 

Who can grasp an idea of the work done 
by the American people who has not 
ridden some thousands of miles over its 
railroads? Excelling the Roman, who 
demonstrated his greatness by building 
marvelous roads, still extant, through 
western Europe and the British Isles, 
the American has built railroads, (whose 
locomotive is, as Henry Carey has said, a 
ship with a port at every mile], steel- 
tracked roads which aggregate half of the 
entir^ railroad mileage of the world. 

It would need that one should see the 
river system of that valley which exceeds 
in fertility and variety of productions and 
capacity to support a dense population, 
and salubrity of climate, as well as in its 
vast extent, every valley in the civilized 
world. This river system affords naviga- 
tion for steamboats over 17,000 miles of 
internavigable water-courses at a low 
stage of water and 25,000 miles at a high 
stage of water. 

One needs to feel that they are in com- 
munication with the rest of mankind 
through a system of telegraphs which 
aggregates one-fourth of the telegraph 
system of the world. One must see the 
centers of business, where an aggregate 
annual production of over 17,000,000,000 
is handled. One needs to see the business 
man, the farmer, the miner and the man- 
ufacturer, who, numbering less than one- 
fifteenth of the world, do one-third of the 
mining, one-fourth of the manufacturing, 
produce one-fifth of the agricultural pro- 
ducts, and own one-sixth of the wealth of 
the world. 

One should see the people and 
their schools in which 12,000,000 
children are educated, educated, too, 
under systems more or less released 
from the bondage of antiquated 
scholastic ideas. One should see the 345 



universities and colleges for men, the 200 
for women, the 450 institutes for education 
in the different departments of learning, 
science, law, theology and medicine. One 
should see the development of artistic 
taste as expressed in our architecture and 
in the public and private collections of 
paintings and sculpture. One should 
learn the conservatism of a self governing 
people, who have preserved their form of 
constitution as well as its spirit. As Mr. 
Depew, in his summary of these great 
facts of our progress, has said: In the 
scant 100 years of its existence, six out of 
seven royal families in Italy have seen 
their thrones overturned^and their king, 
doms disappear. Most of the kings, dukes- 
princes and margraves of Germany, who 
were in power 100 years ago, have now 
neither prerogative nor domain. Spain 
has gone through violent changes in this 
period, and France has been turned and 
overturned, but has finally based her 
government on the expressed will of the 
people. The governments of the Haps- 
burgs and Hohenzollerns have had to 
concede constitutions to their people, and 
are in the course of giving larger and 
larger power to them, so that the "govern- 
ment of the people, by the people and 
for the people" shall dominate the earth, 
and is destined ultimately to replace 
monarchi ;al systems. Power in England 
has fully devolved upon ministers, who 
await the pleasure of voters: the Salisbury 
of to-day is far in advance of the Chartists 
of fifty years ago. 

One needs to see a country over wliich 
raged a civil war unparalleled in modern 
history for the fierceness with which it 
was contested. A war extending over a 
battle line of 2000 miles, where a blockade 
extended along a coast line of 3000 miles, 
a war which cost $8,000,000,000, in which 
were killed 600,000 men, and which dis- 
abled over 1,000,000. 

For our government to ask its citizens 
and foreigners to an exhibition to see 
what Columbus has done, they must in- 
vite them to see a continental emjnre which 
extends 3000 miles east and west, and 
1500 miles north and south. To ask 
them to see anything less than this, is to 
ask them to see the play of Hamlet with 
the part of Hamlet left out. 

The western stories show how the 
western man appreciates what he has 
done. His cities are greater than those 
evolved by Alladin's rubbing his lamp, 
for they have come to stay, anci are not 
mere illusory visions, nor Chateaux en- 



Espagne. The humor of the American 
city builder is well expressed in the fol- 
lowing story: 

"Stranger, was you ever in Kansas 
City?" 
"Yes, I was there last week." 
"Oh, but you ought to see it now!" 
There is more of truth condensed in this 
piece of fun, than, perhaps, in an octavo 
volume. 

It is impossible to bring to New York 
the people's palaces and the summer re- 
sorts of the New Jersey shore, of the Wis- 
consin lakes, or of Monterey. No one 
can conceive the princeliness with which 
the magnates have built the railroad 
hotel at Del Monte. After laying out a 
garden of 100 acres, and lavishing on it 
the adornments of modern gardenesque 
taste, they found themselves hampered in 
carrying out their ideas to their full ex- 
tent by the want of water. They, there- 
fore, bought a river, sixteen miles distant, 
and piped it over to Monterey. 

At the eastern base of the Rocky moun- 
tains, perhaps a couple of hundred miles 
south of Denver, are completely fitted out 
bessemer steel works. The grand Denver 
post office, built only a few years since, is 
already too small for the business that 
must be transacted in it. This city, but a 
short time ago the residence of the goph- 
er, claims, like Los Angeles, of southern 
California, a population of 100,000. Chi- 
■:;ago, with its magnificent municipal 
works, claims a population of 1,000,000, 
and already looks down on New York as 
a mere "side-show" and adjunct to her 
greatness. St. Louis is one of the great 
central cities of the continent, a great 
manufacturing and distributing point of 
unlimited possibilities. Cincinnati, by 
her art schools and museums, is advancing 
rapidly in the development of fine arts 
and music. The town of Birmingham, in 
the new south, is recovering from the 
hectic fever of her first boom, and is build- 
ing her greatness on the unequaled ad- 
vantages of her iron deposits. New Or- 
leans, Atlanta and Savannah are immense 
centers of internal and external commerce. 
Norfolk, on the Chesapeake, is the start- 
ing point of a transcontinental road and is 



perhaps destined to imperial greatness — a 
permanent greatness superior to that 
which Venice ever saw. 

Pittsburg, at the head of the Ohio river, 
is the centre of a petroleum trade which 
gives light to the Japanese and those in 
Europe who would otherwise sit? in dark- 
ness. The petroleum pipe lines of Penn- 
sylvania are the marvel of the world. 
Pittsburg, itself, is a metallurgic centre for 
all the great ores, and is now producing 
for the first time in the history of the 
world, unlimited quantities of aluminium , 
at a price that brings it into the range of 
infinite uses. 

But why enumerate facts and statistics 
which lie open to the observation of every 
tourist or even careful reader? 

T reiterate that in addition to the naval 
display made by the governments of the 
old world, the quadri-centennial should 
be the 

DISPLAY OF A CONTINENT. 

Its Mississippi valley, sloping to the 
south is watered by interlocked rivers 
carrying an enormous fleet of vessels 
adapted to its particular traffic. The con- 
tinent is gridironed with railroads, which, 
with the steamboats, do an internal trade 
of stupendous aggregate. It is a continent 
of cities, towns and villages, all built, you 
may say, within 100 years, and the largest 
proportion of them within twenty-five. 
It is a continent of farms, opened, fenced 
and with their necessary buildings; a con- 
tinent of mines and manufactures such as 
exists nowhere else on God's footstool; a 
continent of the freest people in the 
world, which is daily attracting the best 
as well as the most energetic emigrants 
from all the continents, islands and 
nations in the world; a continent to which 
capital is, and has been flowing steadily 
to find solid and successful investment; 
a continent settled by a people who have 
demonstrated their conservatism and 
deep respect for law, their splendid hu- 
manitarian feeling, and who, while build- 
ing innumerable school houses, have not 
neglected to erect temples to the one 
supreme God of the universe. 

Horace J. Smith. 






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